Congress tweaks US video-privacy law so Netflix can get on Facebook

Finally, you can share your dubious viewing habits with anyone who will listen.

It looks like Netflix will finally manage to get the small change to US privacy law that it's been seeking for nearly two years now. Last night, the Senate passed a reform to the Video Privacy Protection Act, or VPPA, that Netflix says it needs in order to integrate its services with Facebook.

Right now, the VPPA stops anyone's movie-rental history from being disclosed without specific written consent. Netflix expressed to its shareholders back in July 2011 [PDF] that the VPPA made it "ambiguous" how it could get consent from US users to allow a sharing function on Facebook. Given that online privacy has been a growing area of litigation in the past few years, the concern was warranted.

The reform bill that just passed, H.R. 6671, should clear up Netflix's concerns as well as those of other streaming-video providers that want to reach out to your inner over-sharer. It also shows the contours of what a Netflix sharing function, on Facebook or otherwise, might look like. The bill makes clear that: 1) consent for sharing video-watching history can be granted over the Internet; and 2) consent can be given for a whole period of time, up to two years, and doesn't need to be given every time sharing happens. It also specifies that the disclosure has to be in a "distinct" form. In other words, don't put it in the fine print. Consumers will be allowed to withdraw consent for sharing when they want to, on a case-by-case basis, or altogether.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) originally attached VPPA reform to a much larger bill that would force law enforcement to get warrants before snooping on e-mail, a change to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act long sought by privacy advocates. However, the video-rental-privacy part, which is relatively non-controversial, was stripped out of the ECPA bill so that it could be passed quickly according to Politico's Morning Tech (no link available).

The VPPA is something of an oddity in US law. It was passed after the 1988 US Senate debate over the confirmation of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Bork, who failed to get Senate approval to join the high court, passed away earlier this week.

During the hearings, a reporter from Washington DC's alt-weekly City Paper acquired the nominee's video-rental history from Bork's local video store, and published a story based on his selections.

Bork's movie-watching predilections were completely unremarkable. They included 12 Alfred Hitchcock flicks; solid Americana like On the Town, The Wild Bunch, and The Right Stuff; and British costume dramas such as The Private Life of Henry the Eighth.

The story got Congress' attention, though. It resulted in the passage of the VPPA, one of the most thorough privacy laws passed by the federal government. Violating the VPPA entails penalties of up to $2,500 per offense.

Now that Netflix can be sure it won't run afoul of such penalties, we can all look forward to a Facebook newsfeed full of friends who broadcast every episode of television they watch.

What is a bigger story is that the senate removed a provision on this law that would have updated email privacy laws so that the government requires a warrant if they want to access your email. So big companies like Netflix get their own video privacy law updated while the American people get nothing.

I already have 53 posting on my feed from Spotify... Now I will have to wade through even more spam blocking what I want to see my friends actually post intentionally.

I truly hate that Spotify requires Facebook now. I'm glad I got in before that happened. I do know several people that want a music service exactly like Spotify, but who won't use Facebook for whatever reason. So they go to other services, instead.

Congress should probably be paying attention to more important things this week... I guess this is kind of like a smoke break for them.

I'd agree, but if Congress had held up on legislation until they sorted their deficit concerns out we'd have had no new legislation since sometime in early 2011.

This is in the SENATE, which either already has passed Obama's newest compromise version of the fiscal cliff solution, or would pass it within an hour after it hits the floor.

Since they're basically sitting back and munching on popcorn while watching the Republicans in the House make total fools of themselves, they have plenty of time to pass uncontroversial legislation that can actually still make it through the lame duck session.

That said, the House still will have to pass an identical bill, and God only knows when it'll reach a state where they're willing to vote on anything at all.

Oh my, so finally the US users are going to get the monstrosity that made me cancel my Netflix subscription here in Finland. My 1 month free trial of constantly getting told to connect to Facebook is finally over. A Facebook account is not required to sign up for Netflix here, but they're really annoyed at you if you don't connect it to Facebook. Here's the Netflix experience of someone who does not want to connect it to Facebook:

This incredibly irritating Facebook forcing only happens on the browser version. The PS3 Netflix app does not show any pop-ups and there is a "Popular on Facebook" row that is not greyed out even if you haven't connected. My brother has confirmed the same on the Xbox 360 version. The Android app shows you a Facebook pop-up once but doesn't bother you after that.

So if you're watching Netflix on a web browser, get ready for irritating nag screens until you cave in and connect. If you're watching with another app, there are no big changes.

It's like I can't face palm hard enough after reading this post. Congress had a knee jerk reaction when someones video rental/viewing history was shown to a large group of people that might find it interesting but is going to allow peoples rental/viewing history to be shown to a large group of people that don't care? It seems like,ifur going to about face on the very core of the law, then the entire thing would be invalidated instead of just adding a few asteriks to the end of it.

Congress should probably be paying attention to more important things this week... I guess this is kind of like a smoke break for them.

I'd agree, but if Congress had held up on legislation until they sorted their deficit concerns out we'd have had no new legislation since sometime in early 2011.

This is in the SENATE, which either already has passed Obama's newest compromise version of the fiscal cliff solution, or would pass it within an hour after it hits the floor.

Since they're basically sitting back and munching on popcorn while watching the Republicans in the House make total fools of themselves, they have plenty of time to pass uncontroversial legislation that can actually still make it through the lame duck session.

That said, the House still will have to pass an identical bill, and God only knows when it'll reach a state where they're willing to vote on anything at all.

Not to derail the discussion into the minutiae of US politics, but Democrats don't have enough votes to pass just any arbitrary bit of legislation at will. That requires 60 of the 100 votes, more than the Democrats have right now. "Budget reconciliation" only requires 51 votes, but there is no passed budget to which to reconcile.

It's like I can't face palm hard enough after reading this post. Congress had a knee jerk reaction when someones video rental/viewing history was shown to a large group of people that might find it interesting but is going to allow peoples rental/viewing history to be shown to a large group of people that don't care? It seems like,ifur going to about face on the very core of the law, then the entire thing would be invalidated instead of just adding a few asteriks to the end of it.

Congress doesn't care if you tell someone, anyone, or everyone what you've been renting. They care that you explicitly consented to have the information shared. That's it.

This bill doesn't allow your viewing history to be shown to everybody you know on Facebook. It allows you to allow that. Still your choice. That's the whole point.

Why on Earth would Netflix want to sell which movies you watch? and to whom? Political candidates and parties? Economic candidates and parties? Police candidates and parties? Judicial candidates and parties?

The hole here is that people will *never* remember they are being spied on. Like they don't remember that all Gmail is read by Google.

I already have 53 posting on my feed from Spotify... Now I will have to wade through even more spam blocking what I want to see my friends actually post intentionally.

I truly hate that Spotify requires Facebook now. I'm glad I got in before that happened. I do know several people that want a music service exactly like Spotify, but who won't use Facebook for whatever reason. So they go to other services, instead.

Spotify fixed that finally. I signed up for Spotify three days ago once I heard that they dropped the FB requirement.

I remember back in the day netflix had a social aspect where they would let friends browse each other's queues and you could recommend movies to each other, see how your friends rate movies etc.

I loved that feature, but of course netflix got rid of it.

OTOH I don't want most of my facebook friends to see my viewing habbits. That's a totally different crowd, different from my netflix friends and no matter how they link to facebook, it's not going to give me my friends ratings and queues.

Oh my, so finally the US users are going to get the monstrosity that made me cancel my Netflix subscription here in Finland. My 1 month free trial of constantly getting told to connect to Facebook is finally over. A Facebook account is not required to sign up for Netflix here, but they're really annoyed at you if you don't connect it to Facebook. Here's the Netflix experience of someone who does not want to connect it to Facebook:

This incredibly irritating Facebook forcing only happens on the browser version. The PS3 Netflix app does not show any pop-ups and there is a "Popular on Facebook" row that is not greyed out even if you haven't connected. My brother has confirmed the same on the Xbox 360 version. The Android app shows you a Facebook pop-up once but doesn't bother you after that.

So if you're watching Netflix on a web browser, get ready for irritating nag screens until you cave in and connect. If you're watching with another app, there are no big changes.

Since I don't have a FB account, that's gonna get old really quick. I know, I know I'm an old fart yelling get off my lawn you damn kids, but I can't for the life of me understand this obsession people have with FB. My younger brother is on FB like a crack addict on the pipe. Every time he comes to visit first thing he has to do is log into FB and see if something interesting has been posted in the last hour or two. I don't give a rats about connecting with people I went to high school or college with or hearing about their lives. If I wanted to stay in touch with them, I would have in the first place.

Congress doesn't care if you tell someone, anyone, or everyone what you've been renting. They care that you explicitly consented to have the information shared. That's it.

No, the original VPPA was most definitely a knee jerk reaction, specifically that Congress cared very much about no one finding what THEY were renting. "Some alt-weekly newspaper got Bork's video rental records? Oh my God, they could have gotten mine!"

The fact that the law protected anyone else's privacy, that perhaps it should have been generalized to all consumer records instead of just video rentals, or that it might cause problems down the road, was completely coincidental.